in the name of zero

i’m really not the type of guy who would spend many hours on the phone talking to someone, be it a girl or a guy. but sometimes, i make exceptions. especially if a girl called. i rarely get calls from girls afterall. a while ago, a guy from school called. he isn’t really my friend or anything, and i hope he doesn’t think i’m his friend or anything either. i just wish that he would stop calling and pestering me with his countless inquiries about linux. it’s sickening. at first it was ok, but after two years of the same thing, it’s kinda disappointing to know that he still hasn’t taken any step towards even at least an attempt to install any form of linux on his computer. all he does is download and collect cds of whatever distribution he fancy’s and call me at home asking me for recommedations and comparisons. personally, i think it’s a good thing, but gosh dude! can’t you just fucking install each one instead and learn and compare them against each other first hand? i know many people with varying degrees of the “collect and compare” syndrome too but this guy is the worst of that bunch. he is the lamest _ever_ computer savvy wannabe in my entire school’s history and i pray that he realizes that and do something about it before it’s too late. i also find it quite disturbing that i only talked about this now.

typical conversation on the phone:

him: hey niel! which one do you like, mandriva or fedora? i heard fedora core X has been released just recently.

me: i don’t know. use anything. i don’t care. for a guy like you, i’d recommend ubuntu. but don’t take my word for it. just freakin’ try anything for pete’s sake!

him: yeah. but i want something that is already complete with all the necessities.

— he interrupts his own line and proceeds with another question —

him: hey! do you know how to use webcam in linux?

me: no.

him: but can it’s driver be emulated? something like that. can i use wine with it.

me: i don’t know. why don’t you install linux first please.

him: it’s too troublesome.

— again, he interrupts his own line with another question —

him: i have a friend who knows how to program in delphi. he says it’s a breeze for him to make a video conferencing application in it. what programming languages do use?

me: c

him: fck dude! that’s hard. i’ve tried java. it’s quite complex for me too.

me: *sigh*

— interruption again, this time, it’s mysql —

him: how about mysql? you know about that project some fourth year students did? i think that was kinda cool. i never knew it as a gui!

— at this point, i realized i’m getting nowhere fast so i promptly told him i need to sleep already —

me: listen. um, i must sleep now. bye.

dreaming the good dream,
- niel

i hate to admit it but i’m a big fan of bishoujo (girl) animes. they aren’t the ones made for girl audiences. quite the opposite. the usual ending is that the boy gets to kiss his girl and they live happily ever after. but not after tons and tons of heart wrenching scenarios that would surely beat the crap out of the soft at heart. usually, the filling would include the typical high school love drama and worse. i don’t have any knack for the “worse” but the high school part is always something to look forward to. sailor type, pleated skirt, knee high sock uniforms are always a bonus! it’s a great symbolism of girls and women all around. they’re usually involved in all of the stories i tell myself. a delusion mind you. but even though i mix my own blend of fantasy, the stories are simply just an evolved form of the stereotype plots i get to experience in many anime titles. sometimes though, i also use blogs as rough draft for my plot. moreover, my image of the perfect anime girl is stuck in my psyche as a clueless, good looking chick with cute, well formed breasts.

what can i say? my fan boyism for such things is so great. i’ve yet to find a local dweeb that can match my imagination at this area. although there are some persons, (or should i say, friends) that have the inclination. it brings me relief that they are somewhat on the same bandwagon as me, though not whole heartedly. such thoughts bring meaningful reasons to my otherwise pathetic existence. a good anime with cute girls and a good plot never fails to get my attention and make me smile. it deserves a second round of concentrated-undisturbed viewing.

sadly, writers also have the sadistic ability to twist the knife in my heart real further by raising the complexity of the story to dichotomic proportions. the choices are usually relationship-related, and most of the time, the girl (main character) makes a decision opposite to mine. that’s a real turn off. really. after all of these, lots of crying and chasing around happens. the girl realizes she’s an idiot but tries to act cold. quite annoying. then the guy realizes that the girl is a dumb, over-sentimental, clueless soul that needs to be hugged and kissed and forced before she becomes true to her feelings. again, quite annoying.

then they end up making out. no problem there.

yeah. so i decided to watch onegai teacher alone in my room for only one reason. i don’t want anyone looking at me while i get emotional and excited over cute romantic scenes.

i’ve only watched up to episode three, yet i really feel that i should watch the entire anime straight on. deep down inside i’m jealous and i want to have a similar experience also. not exactly with a teacher. hmm any girl cute enough to make men turn their heads and whistle when she passes by. there are many girls like that in school, but since it’s vacation… i can only sigh in disgust. here’s a screenshot for all you visual people out there.

truly, truly, keeping a secret is a wonderful thing. especially if that secret is a love affair. forbidden might i add. i’m actually quite thrilled about the whole idea. this is a complexity my simple mind cannot comprehend. i guess the closest thing i have to that is keeping my love life secret to my parents. then again, that isn’t really something exciting. for now, i have no choice but to be contented with that scenario. i’m not getting any younger. that pains me a little.i just wish i lived a high school life worthy of an anime film plot.

oh well, i hope i can come back as someone cool in my next life.

moving on, i’ve been hanging around #ubuntu-ph @ freenode recently. made a few friends too! i talk mostly about steph, but somehow, i feel that they don’t get tired hearing about my stories and how much i love steph and all that. wonderful people they have there. wonderful.

..opened up a new “storeless” business last week. they sell nothing but coke. seems like they’ve been observing me too much. fuck! i hate them for taking advantage of me this way! assholes.

[ rant ]
you know you’re screwed when thirty minutes later, dd_rescue is still cranking and you have something like this in your terminal.

dd_rescue: (warning): /mnt/cdrom/Naruto 95-96.avi (157567.5k): Input/output error!
dd_rescue: (info): ipos:    159744.0k, opos:       159744.0k, xferd:    159744.0k
             errs:             176, errxfer:        88.0k, succxfer:    159656.0k
       +curr.rate:       4414kB/s, avg.rate:      149kB/s, avg.load:  0.2%

[ life ]
i haven’t been doing any hobby related things recently for two reasons. first, it’s finals week. second, i’m watching naruto and i don’t want to be bothered by anything. it sounds so troublesome to me.

[ girl ]
ms bee. the sweet-sexy babe that sets my heart aflame everytime i see her! today for instance, she was wearing a t-shirt that was so small and tight, i drooled. my mind drifted for a few moments while i tried to make sense of what was going on. i realized that her sexyness doped me and i was too weak to resist it. luckily, i still had some power left to wave at her “hi”.

[ summer ]
…means boring hours at home with lots of housework. while the prospect of having no classes sounds like something to look forward to, i have mixed emotions about it because we seriously lack young feminine aura at our house. (unlike in school).

i played this game, (Jiraiya’s Peeping Hole), i got a high score that i set a new record. but the php script also didn’t work (which is supposed to congratulate me for the achievement and perhaps… just perhaps.. add my name to a hall of fame of some sort).

i don’t know if this is something to be proud of or to be ashamed of.

[ a song ]

relient k - who i am hates who i’ve been. perfect song while on a late night cruisin’. any decent car will do just fine. as long as the road is smooth and the only other source of light other than the car’s lights are the stars and the moon.

[ foxpro ]

i broke my lame-ass module yesterday so much that while everyone was working, i just went girl hunting at friendster before taking my siesta. the chairs in the grade school computer laboratory made a satisfactory bed. didn’t have the motivation to fix it. i prefered making a fresh, clean one instead.

[ foxpro ]
turns out, some of my classmates are also having problems with their foxpro projects. specifically, how to use sql with a list box.

[ pinoy big brother ]
so i’m getting hooked into watching pbb because i recently realized that roxie is so cute and i can’t get enough of her. and i wanna see her everyday. and she’s even cuter when she cries.
(more…)

hectic days till the semester ends for sure. one thing, i’m beginning to feel the pressure in my database class though not that much yet. our teacher started a forum in our eclass where my classmates could share new insights about foxpro and they’ve been very vocal about their achievements. lots of sharing, teaching and asking going on in there.

i went home yesterday rather tired because our group spent the later part of the afternoon till about 7:30 making things work in our foxpro project. i honestly didnt knew anything about foxpro except the obvious, which is to drag and drop widgets onto a form. felt rather pathetic. i usually crack under pressure but yesterday was ok. jokes always lighten the mood and i’m lucky that my group mates were boys and my friends. we could cuss and tell green jokes to our hearts delight.. because there where no girls around. (but then that was also a disadvantage). i managed somehow. (but the foxpro project was still the same. no improvements whatsoever) i hope my groupmates won’t get angry at me.

(more…)

ok, so i encountered my first kernel stump yesterday but i was able to solve it. though, quite stupidly.

i made a kernel prints() function which is actually just a wrapper around another function printc() that writes to vga memory directly, one character at at time.

to verify that i got the basic vga concepts covered, i tried to prints(”stephanie”); hoping to see steph’s lovely name getting printed. unfortunately, grub throws an error upon loading of the kernel then quits rather shamelessly. at first i thought that the emulator memory was small (64mb only) and i verified thru grub’s displaymem command that it was indeed small. enlarging it didn’t do the trick.

Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory

then i tried allocating a buffer from inside one of the kernel sources thinking that by doing so, it would have the correct relocation (fall inside .data).

char hername[10]="stephanie";
prints(hername);

which worked.

the problem was that i linked the kernel multiboot header with the rest of the object files without explicitly telling the linker how to handle rodata sections. by doing so, section .rodata relocates after section .comment which is another segment altogether and does not have a virtual memory address space too after the final linking. as an interim solution, i assembled the multiboot header as aout then link it with the rest of the kernel objects finally, as an elf32-i386 object.

which worked.

[ foss at zamboanga ]
lots of chick here and there. me and my friends ran errands and saw even more chicks. the more mature of the rest of the delegates seated infront with all of their achievement glory. master of this… master of that.. consistent honor student in college.. head/dean/whatever of department of X in the university of X. it was more of a pageant during the early parts. you get the idea. most of the early speakers gave rather boring speeches. pretty much just a rehash of another rehash of another rehash of the first speech (which is actually just another rehash in itself).

strictly speaking, the event wasn’t really about foss. it was about how great ubuntu is. how cool and easy it is to get ubuntu going. i have no qualms about that though but they should have changed the title to something more appropriate - ubuntu at zamboanga.

all in all, a superb effort by the organizers. not bad for a first time thing.

update: the interim “assemble header as aout and link with elf” solution was the wrong approach, said the guy i chatted with… and many kernel enthusiasts would also frown upon it… this is how it’s supposed to be done with a kernel linker sript.